


Truth

by shoelace-noose (princessbekker)



Category: Law & Order: SVU, The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: M/M, Mental Illness, Past Abuse, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Rehab, druggie!Mike
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 01:29:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18539518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessbekker/pseuds/shoelace-noose
Summary: Mike and Klaus get out of rehab, and Klaus opens up a bit about his life.





	Truth

When Mike gets out of rehab, he has an apartment to go back to, a friend who’s been watering his plants and picks him up at the front door to say how proud of him he is. In spite of all the fucked up shit he’s gone through, there’s people and a place he can go to. He has a whole network of support for days when the craving hits hard, or his depression feels insurmountable.

But Klaus has nothing and no one. He was homeless before his third OD in a week had him forced into rehab, and his only friend besides Mike is his dead brother Ben, who he claims to still be able to see and talk to. The doctors referred him to a psychiatrist, but Klaus refused to do anything but talk in circles and lies and anything to keep from being forced to confront his issues. He’s like that, a mess and completely resistant to help. And it’s intoxicating enough that when they both hit thirty days at the same time, Mike offers him the couch in his living room.

The two of them walk out together, arm in arm as Klaus twitches with the need for a fix and talks in irritation to someone Mike can’t see, both holding their little plastic hospital bags of belongings that had been confiscated or otherwise stowed while they served their sentences. Peter is standing out front, leaning against his car with a smile on his face. A smile that quickly drops when he sees Klaus.

“You made it,” Peter says, pulling him into a hug, but unable to tear his eyes away from Klaus, who’s still talking to thin air. “And this is…?”

“Klaus. I offered him a place to stay while he gets back on his feet, he doesn’t have anywhere to go.”

Of anyone Mike has ever met, Peter is the most patient and understanding when it comes to mental illness, especially the scary ones. It’s probably because of his sister, and the way she went through life. Does Peter ever wonder if she would have turned to substance abuse, had she not gotten the help she needed early on? Would she have turned out like Klaus, drowning in drugs or hallucinations or both?

“Peter,” Peter says, holding a hand out for Klaus to shake. 

For a long moment, Klaus just looks between him and the same empty spot he’s been speaking to all morning beside him. “Was she your sister?”

“Excuse me?”

“The woman beside you. Blonde. Looks like you. Covered in blood. Was she your sister?”

All the color drains from Peter’s face. He then silently gets into the driver’s seat, and does not respond. Klaus has a tendency to figure out how to hurt people, but it’s always general insecurities, stuff Mike picks up on from body language once Klaus points it out. This is too specific. It sets off alarm bells in Mike’s mind, the way they go when a suspect knows just a little too much about the case at hand. But obviously Klaus had nothing to do with Pam’s death, so what the fuck?

When the two of them slip into the backseat, Klaus choosing the middle because he insists his brother is sitting with him but he wanted to sit next to Mike as well, it’s time to ask questions. Mike hasn’t missed it, but something deep down says he has to.

“What were you talking about?” He hisses through his teeth.

Klaus laughs a little and plays with the medical bracelet curled around his wrist. “I told you, I talk to the dead. Apparently your boyfriend’s dead sister is still following him around, so.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Mike argues, as if that’s the important part of this. “And Klaus, you know that’s impossible-”

“Did you ever read ‘Extra Ordinary’ by Vanya Hargreeves? Her sweet little biography of the Umbrella Academy.”

No, he hasn’t, but it was big news when the previously unknown Number Seven spilled all the dirty little secrets the Hargreeves children underwent. There were sections about the family as a whole, and about each individual child. Number Four, Klaus, was the academy disgrace even before the book was published. Tabloids ran articles about him getting high during missions, and getting drunk on the streets as a teenager. Rumor has it that Four did it to suppress his powers because of how overwhelming they were, that Six joined him too for the same reasons before his death.

The dots connect. Four. Klaus. And his dead brother. Ben. Six. Holy shit. No wonder Klaus is so distrustful and constantly chasing after any high to get rid of the voices in his head, the voices that must be so much worse if they’re real and not a hallucination he can learn to deal with. Guilt at not believing Klaus the first time washes over him, but comforting Klaus is more important.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. At least I’ve got Ben to keep me company when everyone screams! Fun fact, a lot of people off themselves in rehab, did you know that?”

“Jesus-”

“No, I said it was Ben. Oh, by the way, Ben likes you. He thinks you’re very dependable and nice and…” Klaus squints and looks at the empty seat he insisted had to be left for Ben. “Oh, Benny, that’s so  _ dirty _ -”

“Klaus,” Mike says gently, the way he always does when Klaus gets caught up talking to himself. 

“Okay, fine, he didn’t say anything dirty. He just wanted me to tell you he thinks your eyes are pretty.”

Funny that Klaus blames that particular phrase on Ben, when he’s said it to Mike in the middle of the night when the nightmares are keeping them from sleep many a time. He’s always too tired to remember the conversations in the morning, but he says the company help. Once he admitted that people only pay attention to him when they want something for him, accompanied by a very lewd gesture. It set off alarm bells too, but a different kind. Mike hasn’t been in the NYPD, in SVU, for a good five years, but he never forgets the kind of pain he saw. Pain no one, especially not Klaus, deserves.

“Do any of your family know you were there?” Peter asks, suddenly reminding Mike that he’s in the car. “Or that you’re homeless?”

Klaus laughs, but it’s wrong. Broken. “No, of course not. Except for Ben, I don’t see them, like, ever. They all pretend I don’t exist. Oh, oh, except for Diego. We run into each other every now and then. He beats up my dealer, tells me to get sober. Yanno, real fun family bonding time. Fun fact, he usually picks me up when I leave rehab to try and keep me from getting high right away, but this last time when I OD’d and he drove me to the ER, right? He found me in the alley, it was this whole thing- but I expected him to be there when I woke up, and he wasn’t. The nurses said he wanted ‘em to tell me he wasn’t gonna come back.”

At the very end, his voice goes small and fragile. All he wants to do is hold him, comfort him, make it all better. Some very protective part of Mike in the back of his head says to start a fight with Diego, but he’s working on controlling those sort of impulses so he doesn’t act on them. That’s something else he started working through at rehab. He doesn’t need the high to control himself, he can do that on his own, all that stuff. And he’s got a couple shiny new prescriptions for bipolar with depressive tendencies- which he’s trying to remember to take even though they remind him a lot of obsessively popping xanax to make it go away.

“I’m sorry.”

“I deserve it.”

“No one deserves that,” Peter adds from the front seat. “They’re family, they’re supposed to love you no matter what.”

“Bold of you to assume they loved me in the first place. Honestly, I don’t even think any of us are capable of it, Daddy really fucked us up with the whole ‘torture and isolation and perving’ thing he had going on.”

The car jerks suddenly, swerving off to the shoulder and stopping too fast. Peter turns in his seat to look at Klaus with the same intensity he looks at case files with. Even knowing it comes from a place of concern, it’s enough to make Mike shrink back in his seat. But Klaus just stares at him with mild curiosity.

“What?”

“‘Perving?’ What did your father do?”

Klaus seems stricken by his own words and turns to the seat beside him again, listening to Ben’s input on the whole thing. As far as Mike has seen, Ben is usually the voice of reason for him.

“Calm down, he just had these freaky cameras everywhere, always watching. There was one in the bathroom, even. Five found it when we were like, twelve, and broke it. It never got replaced, or at least, not that I know. And to think, all this time the great Reginald Hargreeves acted like  _ I _ was the slut who couldn’t control myself.”

“Klaus, that’s not okay,” Mike says in the calmest voice he can muster.

“Nothing in my life ever has been, so there.”

The car starts again, and they continue the drive back to Mike’s apartment, Klaus carrying on a one sided conversation- argument really- the whole way.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @shoelace-noose, where I have a lot more content bc most stuff doesnt make it to AO3


End file.
